Most importantly, the intelligence and wisdom
harnessed from a 17 year historic pursuit
fostered the creation of the DSD SACD by
Sony's engineers in 1999.

Regarding SACD's rumored ulterior agenda
aside, Sony's new DSD SACD digital audio
standard in its augmentation of advanced data
storage capacity conveyed a bandwidth
surpassing that of the Redbook CD format,
thus seemingly rendered obsolete the
company's monumental, 1982 contribution to
the world. At the time of this writing, with
music supplied from Sony's own vault and that
of an alliance of prominent record labels
such as DMP, Phillips, Telarc and Universal
Music Group, the brighter future of the
high-resolution format is doubly assured by
the additional support of highly visible
hardware manufacturers such as Accuphase, DCS,
Krell, Marantz and Panasonic.

Overall, the current state of digital audio
is one of incredibly complex mathematical
processes in the forms of sampling rate
manipulations and word-length extensions.
Nowadays, practically all major CD player
manufacturers incorporate processes that will
either oversample or upsample the Redbook CD
data to much higher sampling frequencies or
higher bit rates.

Among the handful of companies whose CD
players do not perform either over or
upsampling, Audio Note is best known in the
high end circle for its steadfast advocacy in
SET amplification. From this company that
offers audiophiles the $90,000, 27 Wpc Ongaku
integrated amplifier, comes a $30,000 DAC
with no oversampling, upsampling, or digital
filter: the DAC 5 Special.

We shall examine the current state of the
compact disc as defined by the British
company in two articles: a technical
background and a report on the auditioning.
First the technical background.

Audio Note & the Super DAC

The DAC 5 Special is only
Audio Note's second costliest DAC, next to
the $49,500 DAC 5 Signature. Still, in its
internal price sheet, AN refers to the DAC 5
Special as the "Super DAC".

At the emergence of the aforementioned
oversampling and upsampling movements during
the late 90s, AN owner Peter Qvortrup chose
not to partake in the new schemes as he was
critical of the vastly presumptuous
calculations generated by the techniques. He
saw solutions to refining Redbook CD playback
with his recognized expertise in using
discrete components to create system synergy.
In contrast to increasing the linearity of
the digital-to-analog conversion process via
oversampling and upsampling, Peter suggested
concentration on exercising the utmost care
in original signal preservation and
amplification instead.

Peter developed the proprietary
"1xoversampling™ Direct from Disc™" topology
which he claims is more capable of preserving
the low-level details and dynamic headroom
embedded in the original data stream. The
company designated the application of the
Analog Devices' 18-bit AD1865 converter chip
and the Cirrus Logic's Crystal CS8414
receiver chip to form the primary
architecture of its converters. An in house
designed and manufactured digital input
transformer is used as the digital input
matching device.

The DAC 5 Special utilizes more stringently
selected AD1865 chips.

Also unique among similarly priced DACs in
the world, AN's DAC 5 Special is the only
other DAC that is given Audio Note's
proprietary, internationally patented copper
wired "magic" I/V transformer interface, that
actively couples the DAC chip's output to a
powerful transformer, which AN claims would
yield superior bandwidth and dynamic envelope
than passive or simpler I/V interfaces.

Complimenting this assembly of heavy and
precious metals are exotic parts such as
Black Gate electrolytes, assortment
of ½ and 1% Audio Note™ tantalum film
resistors, Cerafine capacitors and lavish
silver wiring throughout.

According to AN, the extreme extravagance
bestowed upon the DAC 5 Special is to capture
extremely low-level details. Per AN, the use
of the Supermumetal cored interface
transformer, for example, is for the superior
magnetic permeability from its 80% nickel
content core, which in conjunction with a
special bifilar wound bobbin provides a
supposedly close to perfect magnetic coupling
between the primary and secondary windings
through the very permeable nickel core, thus
enabling superior low-level signal behavior.
Designed to uncompromisingly maintain signal
linearity and dynamic contrast of the
thus-extracted low-level signal is the NOS
double triode analog output stage coupled to
a powerful C-core transformer, effectively
dispensing with the need for feedback signal
correction, which AN believes compromises
signal integrity.

Additionally, the R36 C-Core output
transformers designed and made by AN for use
in the Super DAC are claimed to be capable of
reproducing a bandwidth approaching the
5-200kHz frequency extension benchmark, which
AN claims will not only preserve the feeble
signals far better than other DACs' capacitor
coupled circuits will; but will also endow
the Super DAC's two pairs of single-ended
outputs equal dynamic bandwidth and contrasts
as its balanced one.

With all refinements taken together, AN
claims the level of signal fidelity harnessed
in the DAC 5 Special far exceeds that
attained by DACs from any other companies by
any other means.

Systems preparation

As Audio Note employs zero
feedback output stages and relatively small
output capacitors in all of its cheaper DACs,
the company recommends coupling of all its
DACs to preamplifiers with impedances above
47kOhm to avoid bass roll-off. Concurrently,
AN advises its customers to ascertain the
impedance of their non-Audio Note
preamplifiers and experiment with Aux or
Tuner inputs as needed, as some
preamplifiers' CD inputs carry the
sub-optimal, sub-10kOhm rating. In the DAC5
and the other Audio Note™ DACs with output
transformer, however, these impedance
considerations are of no consequence as the
output impedance of a DAC5 is below 4 Ohms
and the DAC3.1x balanced for example is below
10 Ohms.

AN's West Coast Distributor, Ray Lombardi,
graciously provided the $35,000,
complimentary M8 preamplifier for this
review, replacing the $6,000 M3 that served
initially.

Thus, primary observations of the Audio Note™
Super DAC took place in the context of a
$75,000, strictly AN system that was again,
graciously provided by Ray, which included
AN's own $3,300 CDT-2 CD transport, the
$16,500 Conquest Silver Signature 300B
parallel monoblocks and the $20k AN-E SEC
Silver loudspeakers. I checked the total
dollar figure with at least 2 calculators
already.

Secondary observations on the DAC 5 Special
were made in a non-AN system consisting of 47
Laboratory's $5,400 4713 Flatfish CD
transport and Loth X's $15,000 JI300
integrated 300B amplifier, driving, in
rotation, the AN speakers as well as Italian
speaker maker Aliante's $11,000 Royal Device
Laura Studio MK II with Miranda Horn
loudspeaker system. German speaker maker
ELAC's top bookshelf mini-monitor, the
CL330JET, British company Audion's $15,000
Level 5 Golden Dream monoblocks, Linn's
$9,000 Klimax Twin stereo power amplifier and
the Reference Line Preeminence Two passive
preamplifier with the Preeminence One
Signature amplifier also partook into the
auditioning and provided additional insights.

All aforementioned equipment that are not yet
reviewed will be featured in separate
writing. My next installment will detail my
experience with the Super DAC, as well as my
viewpoint on what it represents in the
current high-end audio environment. Stay
tuned.